The story of fried fish in Europe begins with an exile. In the sixteenth century, Sephardic Jews fleeing the Inquisition left the Iberian Peninsula carrying whatever could travel, and their kitchen traveled with them. The floured, fried fish they called pescado frito reached the shores of Britain in their hands. There was a reason it was fried on Fridays: lighting a fire on the Sabbath was forbidden, and cold fried fish kept its flavor into the next day.

Three centuries later the recipe met the potato in London’s East End. By most accounts, the first person to sell fish and fried potatoes under one roof was a young immigrant named Joseph Malin, who opened a small shop in Bow around 1860. From that shop came the pair that now stands for England itself.

The same pair speaks with a different accent on every sea. The Mediterranean says it with olive oil and lemon; Japan, with a whisper-thin batter kept ice-cold until the last moment.

Our plate is the Antalya stop on that long road: the day’s fresh catch in a crackling shell, young oven-roasted potatoes beside it. A five-hundred-year story of migration, breathing at a table that faces the sea.